Imagining "Imagine" : John Lennon's gibberish-filled anthem.

Daily Standard ^ | Joel Engel

[Hillary's Folly]

Imagining "Imagine"
On the anniversary of John Lennon's death, it's worth taking a look at the gibberish in his beloved anthem.
by Joel Engel
12/08/2003 12:00:00 AM

	Email a Friend		Respond to this article

TODAY MARKS the 23rd anniversary of John Lennon's murder by a deranged fan, an act that at once revivified the ex-Beatle's career and established his 1971 song "Imagine" as the official utopian anthem. For millions of people around the world, the song's three minutes of bumper-sticker slogans describe the best of all possible worlds.

But before the faithful gather in memoriam to light candles and sing "Imagine" together, as they always do on the anniversary, a few of them might want to stop and consider that the lyrics are hardly a recipe for universal bliss. Chaos may be closer to the truth.

Put aside for a moment the inconvenient fact that John once admitted he'd written "All You Need Is Love" as irony. Or that, as a Beatle, his most spirited vocals may have been on the group's cover of "Money (That's What I Want)," which begins: The best things in life are free / But you can keep them for the birds and bees. Or that, on his solo debut album, recorded a year before "Imagine," he sang: I told you before, stay away from my door / Don't give me that brother, brother, brother, brother . . . Let's just take the words of "Imagine" at face value.

Imagine there's no heaven . . . No hell below us . . . Imagine all the people living for today. Okay, let's imagine that; let's imagine six billion people who believe that flesh and blood is all there is; that once you shuffle

off this mortal coil, poof, you're history; that Hitler and Mother Teresa, for example, both met the same ultimate fate. Common sense suggests that such a world would produce a lot more Hitlers and a lot fewer Teresas, for the same reason that you get a lot more speeders / murderers / rapists / embezzlers when you eliminate laws, police, and punishment. Skeptics and atheists can say what they like about religion, but it's hard to deny that the fear of an afterlife where one will be judged has likely kept hundreds of millions from committing acts of aggression, if not outright horror. Nothing clears the conscience quite like a belief in eternal nothingness.

Imagine there's no countries . . . Nothing to kill or die for / No religion too / Imagine all the people / living life in peace. Hmmm. A single, borderless entity. No passports or customs inspectors rifling through your luggage. So far, so good. But wait a second. By what laws, rules, cultures, customs, and mores would we all be living? America's? Saudi Arabia's? Iceland's? Cuba's? Obviously, organizing billions of people from different traditions around a common mindset would require some serious coercion that progressives (many of whom will be out in force tonight with lighted candles) keep reminding us is not our prerogative--not even in countries with brutal dictators. And if there's nothing to kill or die for, then there's really nothing to live for, either--not equality, not liberty, not justice. It bears remembering that those young Englishmen who declared, in the 1930s, that they wouldn't fight for king and country did nothing for the cause of peace; quite the opposite. Lennon's own Oxford Pledge may warm the hearts of pacifists, but it's true music to a tyrant's ears.

Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can / No need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man / Imagine all the people, sharing all the world. . . . Let's begin implementing the third stanza's message by splitting up the royalties to this copyrighted song. Mrs. Lennon, I imagine, will be only too happy to share with the rest of us the proceeds from the semiannual checks she receives for its licensing. In fact, why don't we all participate in every revenue stream created by John's invaluable catalogue? No, even that's not good enough. John wants us all to own everything, so we're each entitled to an equal share of not only his catalogue but also every album, tape, and CD ever made--by every artist. True, in such an egalitarian world, there soon won't be any record stores from which to take home recorded merchandise, since the owners will have nothing left to sell and are anyway no longer the owners (we all are). Nor will there be anything to play or record the music on (assuming any artist still wants to record), since there'd be no one to build the equipment. Why should anyone volunteer to work in a factory making hard goods when everyone else is living in the poshest houses and eating at the finest restaurants for free? Of course, housing and food are going to be problems, too, unless someone volunteers to mine the quarries, hammer nails, plant corn, and catch salmon for the rest of

us. In John's imagined world, su casa es mi casa. So is su radicchio.

And the world will live as one. One what? Violent mess, apparently.

Imagine that.

Joel Engel is an author and journalist in Southern California.

[agrace]

That was a great episode. His sister becomes so convinced that she freaks out - if Sam is really her brother, then he's telling the truth about her other brother dying in Vietnam. Then he leaps into his brother's unit to save his life. Probably my favorite too. Actually a trilogy, IIRC.

[Trampled by Lambs]

"But when you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow..." - "Revolution" (a Lennon tune...)

[August West]

See Post #79

[BSunday]

"But when you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow..." - "Revolution" (a Lennon tune...)

Probably Lennon's self description of his relationship with authority, in general.

[NittanyLion]

I suspect Lennon is asking you to imagine these things along with all the attendant changes necessary to mankind and human nature that would make them possible. I don't think even Lennon believes these things to be possible in the world we live in.

While the author is right in the literal sense, I think he comes off as a bit anal to actually deconstruct the lyrics. 99% of the people listening to the song probably like the tune/sound and never give a second thought to what the lyrics actually mean. Articles like these are the reason conservatives are viewed as so ill-humored. JMO.

[August West]

Actually, even an atheist like myself can plainly see that religion keeps us from all being murderers, rapists, ...i.e. basically animals.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

The one thing that Joel seems to have missed is the title of the song; "Imagine".

Lennon isn't saying that any of these things is possible or particularly preferable. Only that we should imagine them. It's called daydreaming. For is doing so, perhaps we can take a small something from the process and apply it to real life. Like maybe treating each other a little better.

G'head, flame away.

[dhs12345]

He said he later regretted writing this.

[new cruelty]

Actually, he is asking the listener to consider that an alternate reality does, in fact, exist; that's why it's "Imagine there is no heaven...", not "Imagine there were no heaven.." Although extremely subtle, the use of the verb "imagine" followed by the indicative mood (rather than the subjunctive mood) is pure genius - not that I agree with the premise of the song, but it is pure genius.

Whoah...

[NittanyLion]

Exactly.

[Skooz]

Exactly.

It's just a song, people.

It makes as much sense as "Tutti Fruity" or "Girl From Ipanema."

[BSunday]

Lennon isn't saying that any of these things is possible or particularly preferable. Only that we should imagine them

I don't believe in preemptive flaming =). But I will disagree with you using Lennon/Lenin's own words:

"I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be as one."

[metalboy]

Imagine was written as a comment on that Democrat nightmare called Vietnam (something that liberals will always blame Nixon for. Johnson, who`s that?) All he`s saying is "Imagine if the world was like this, wouldn`t it be cool?" Nowhere in that song does he say "we must live like this and force other people to live like this". The mistake liberals make is assuming that, because their IQ is in the double digit range, and also that line that says, "You may say I`m a dreamer but I`m not the only one. I hope some day you`ll join us and the world will be as one" The word is "HOPE". He isn`t saying "You must" join us. Who wouldn`t hope all people would be like that? Of course it`s impossible, even Lennon himself proved that with that with the "no possesions" part, but that`s why he calls it IMAGINE. It isn`t called "We MUST". Liberals take it that he is saying "we must" because they`re thick headed morons. Lennon wasn`t a moron, yes he was a bit of a nut, but he was also a guy who absolutely refused to live in the past like this idiot Neil Young, and would see things for what they were in the present. I highly doubt that if he were alive today and still lived in NYC, that he would be so incredibly stupid as to sing "Imagine" like this dingbat Yoko every five seconds when his own city was attacked twice by psychotic sand monkeys in a span of less than 10 years, and a new Hiter was running amok. He might have went the way of the UN, but on the other hand he was a freggin` nut, and very well might have said "f- it" and wrote a song called "Bomb the bastards" to shock people, and had a picture of him an Yoko naked on the cover. (Oh man, I`m puking at the thought)

[Stone Mountain]

That's an interpretation that may be valid. I still hold to my original premise that the author should lighten up... this was just a song, not a political speech or call to action.

[Trampled by Lambs]

LOL Demanding perfect english in a rock song is beyond silly.

[August West]

If you listen carefully, there is a bazouki (or some such exotic instrument) playing in the background. The arraignment is not as simple as it appears.

[Stone Mountain]

Actually, even an atheist like myself can plainly see that religion keeps us from all being murderers, rapists, ...i.e. basically animals.

Really? Well then, as an athiest, what keeps you from murdering, raping, etc?

[Taliesan]

Lennon isn't saying that any of these things is possible or particularly preferable. Only that we should imagine them.

Now the discussion has hit rock-bottom silliness. Of course he's saying they're preferable . Let's not be stupid.

[Peter Libra]

Sticking up for my late fellow Brit here. John Lennon had your P.T. Barnum beat. $250,000,0000 left to his wife. Defied deportation as a hard line drug addict. Plus his song about the poor people of Liverpool, who would give you what they had. Starkey another one- with his gated mansion in Buckinghamshire. And they said the London Cockney was the smartest thing on two legs- working class that is.

[Skooz]

Buckinghamshire

Brit place names rule.